Art: San San Trilogy - Art Basel Unlimited 2016

Had the pleasure of assisting artists Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe of Marlborough Gallery in the installation and buildout of the viewing cinema rooms for the San San Trilogy video art series they produced for 2016 Art Basel Unlimited. The faux wood dark room lined with ethnographic “treasurers” from the artist created San San metroplex.  

The San San Metroplex is an urban corridor that exists along the coast of California. It is based on an idea put forth by futurist Herman Kahn in his 1967 book The Year 2000. He speculated that the coastal area between an Diego and San Francisco would grow into one giant metropolis. This never happened. We have taken this veritable fiction and made a trilogy of films.  

The films take the form of faux-ethnographic cut-up narratives illustrated through a series of props, environments, pictures, and architectural models. The aesthetic is inspired by the surrealistic banality of a breakfast cereal commercial. 

The physical setting is the placeless and timeless location of the “set.” People exist solely in pictures on the wall, footage on monitors or voices from a stereo. 

The San San Trilogy is comprised of three distinct and autonomous chapters: The Floating Chain, Scenario in the Shade, and Mercury City.